My new cell phone started acting funky last week. Keys were sticking, so every time I tried manually dialing a number that wasn’t on speed dial, I reached a wrong number. And, of course, I was billed for that minute.

So while I was at the eye doctor this morning, I decided to stop by our local Verizon store to see about getting my phone fixed or replaced. The nice young man at the counter was fully sympathetic and could not have been more polite. But unfortunately, as he explained, he couldn’t do a darned thing to help me.

I had to call Verizon instead.

This, as I pointed out, posed a bit of a problem, what with my cell phone’s inability to dial numbers correctly. He was sympathetic with that problem, too, and suggested I use our land line. (No, he couldn’t let me use their phone, he apologized: the store’s management had a rule against that.)

Back at home, I navigated my way through the push-button maze (“Dial 1 for English, 2 for Spanish… et cetera) and finally reached a real-live person… who spoke with a heavy accent I couldn’t quite place. I’d already suspected I wasn’t going to reach anyone local, what with so many corporations contracting with PEO companies to outsource their customer service departments.

Turns out, the man on the phone was in Norway. That’s right, Norway. I can only assume he works for some staff leasing company instead of actually being a Verizon employee. Still, it struck me as odd to realize that while it was a bright, sunny morning here in Kansas it was probably a snowy, dark evening in Oslo or wherever he was. At least I could understand his accent, so I suppose that was a small blessing.

In fact, he was quite pleasant. He pulled up my account and noted that my phone is still under warranty, which means I get a free replacement. He promised to ship it immediately — overnight, even — and said Verizon would pay for a return shipment of my defective phone, too. All I needed to do was use the convenient, pre-paid mailer he’d enclose with the new phone.

Couldn’t I just turn in the old one at my local Verizon store and receive a replacement there, I asked? No, no I couldn’t. Apparently those local stores exist solely for the purpose of selling phones, not replacing them. (Nor, as I found out during our previous problem, are they capable of handling billing inquiries or service complaints.)

As I got off the phone (having carefully avoided wishing him a Good Morning since I have no idea what time it was in Norway), I got to thinking about the inanity of having to use my SouthWestern Bell phone to speak long-distance to a man in Norway to have my replacement phone shipped overnight from the company’s headquarters in New York since their store — just one mile away — wasn’t authorized to handle the transaction.

Just how much money can companies really be saving with staff leasing when it now takes an all-out global effort to handle a situation that used to be as simple as two people talking to each other over a counter at a brick-and-mortar store?

Thursday, September 27th, 2007, 2:08 pm   |   Technology Bites  |  RSS feed Comments and pings are currently closed.